Research Team:

Principal Investigator:

Contact Details:

Expertise:

The Electromagnetic Field Dosimetry Group at NRPB provides advice,
services and performs research on the practical aspects of assessing
people's exposure to electromagnetic fields. Recent projects include
the following:

Group members acted as Consultants during the preparation of the
AGNIR report on TETRA and also made detailed measurements of the waveforms
from mobile terminals and base stations in support of the report.

The lead investigator of this project is a member of the subcommittee
that is designing a method to assess peoples exposures to the radio
waves produced by hand-held mobile phones in an international study
of brain tumours.

Group members are carrying out a study to assess the exposure of
workers with radio transmitters in the broadcast and telecommunications
industries and determine the feasibility of a possible future epidemiological
study.
(www.bham.ac.uk/IOH/MVTRFStudy/RF_Page.htm)

Members of the Group wrote NRPB Report R321 on "exposure to radio
waves near mobile phone base stations" published in June 2000 and
made available in draft to IEGMP during the preparation of its report.

Approach:

Radio wave strengths will be measured near microcell and picocell base
stations at twenty sites with a range of different base station designs
and site characteristics in order to assess typical exposure levels.
Spot measurements will be made using a spectrum analyser and broadband
antennas over a wide range of frequencies, chosen to encompass other
environmental radio transmitters as well as base stations. A structured
series of measurements will be made to produce a detailed profile of
the radio wave strengths at ground level at a subset of the sites. The
measurements will be interpreted by comparing them with the reference
level advised by ICNIRP for exposure of the general public and also by
comparing them with previously published measurements from larger (macrocell)
base stations.

Potential Difficulties:

Selecting 20 sites that are genuinely representative.

Importance:

IEGMP noted that there had been no systematic experimental study in
the UK of, for example, how the intensity changes with distance from
a base station, and no systematic studies that would have allowed it
to make a useful comparison of the intensity of typical exposure levels
received by individuals from mobile phone transmitters compared with
those from other RF sources (Paragraph 4.35). This project aims to address
these areas where published information is lacking with a focus on microcell
base stations.

The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) has proposed the
establishment of a collaborative action on human exposure to radiation
from GSM and GPRS/UMTS base stations across Europe under the new COST
281 action “Potential Health Effects from Emerging Wireless Communication
Systems”. It is intended, under this project, that meetings held
under the collaborative action will be attended with a view to contributing
to the discussions and making the published results of this study available.